The recommendation that Erskine Bowles become the next president of the University of North Carolina system and the release of reporter Judith Miller from jail both show the importance of a vigilant press in the United States.

Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, was jailed for refusing to identify a source to a grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's name. She spent 85 days in jail until her source, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, released her from her vow of confidentiality. Miller testified before the grand jury Friday.

Miller endured almost three months in jail rather than reveal her source, even though she never wrote a story about the operative's outing. That came in a column by Robert Novak. While Miller has proven to be a controversial figure in journalism, mainly due to her reporting on alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, her ethics prevented her from revealing her source. Surely all of us can appreciate someone who stands firm in their beliefs and won't betray them even in the face of incarceration.

Journalists often receive low marks in public opinion polls, but Miller illustrates the courage that many possess when confronted with pressure to reveal sources who would rather remain unknown. Often, those sources are the only way reporters can uncover what's taking place and report information the public deserves to know but those in power want to keep secret.

The necessity for that diligence can be found in the way the UNC Presidential Search Committee concluded its work.

While no one was surprised Bowles received the search committee's nod and will almost certainly be approved by the UNC Board of Governors at its meeting Monday, the manner in which the committee narrowed the list of finalists to him violates at least the spirit of the state's open meetings law if not the law itself.

The search committee met Sept. 7 in a meeting that both the public and press knew about. However, that meeting was then recessed until meetings Sunday and Monday that weren't announced to the public. A UNC lawyer called it a "sequential meeting" done to protect the confidentiality of all the candidates.

When lawyers or politicians start talking about sequential meetings, the public needs to be highly suspicious. The state's citizens deserved to know the names of the finalists for such an important post and to make their own evaluations of their qualifications.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the way the search ended is that the committee had pledged openness and sought the public's input to this point. In fact, the committee promised to release the names of the finalists. That didn't happen. Instead, committee members said they needed to protect the identify of the finalists, which they decided outweighed the public's right to know about the time and place of the next meeting.

Most members of the public can't attend meetings or do the necessary research into the candidates for top-level positions. That role falls to the press, which acts as the public's watchdog to make sure candidates are acceptable and the process is above board.

Attorney General Roy Cooper needs to make a strong statement that the search committee erred in the way it handled its final meeting. That would send a signal to governmental bodies that their actions must be conducted in the open, as uncomfortable as that may be at times.